18/04/2012
James Slack in the
Daily Wail, is acquainting us with the horrors of the EU Parliament, about all the money that is wasted and how, in the Brussels La-La-Land, "money is being wasted on vanity projects like never before".
In particular, we are informed of the new "House Of European History", where the "colleagues" have arranged for "year zero" to start in 1946, airbrushing out the Second World War - all at a cost of something like £50 million in taxpayers' money.
This sort of stuff, though, I was writing more than ten years ago, with direct personal experience from working in the institution. Booker has done similar and many more have followed in our wake. And while there is every sense in a newspaper continually highlighting this extravagant waste and abuse of office, it only really has any great value if it is part of a campaign to get something done about it.
But, as we are having continually
to point out, the
Wail's policy on the EU is to oppose withdrawal. Yet the very things it complains of are an integral part of the EU. They are not subject to negotiation. You either accept them, or you campaign to get out. The
Wail's line, therefore, is the journalistic equivalent of masturbation â pleasurable but ultimately fruitless, a self-indulgence that gets nowhere and is best done in private.
The worst of it though is the pretence. Projecting his own brand of faux outrage, Slack tells us that the EU commission has just demanded an increase in the EU budget of five percent a year for the next seven years. David Cameron, he tells us, "insists" that Britain will not pay.
Then the Slack confides that: "we have heard tough talk over budgets from him before, only for him to cave in, as he did last year over the same issue when he agreed to a 2.9 per cent increase in the budget".
This brings us to the punchline, with Slack suggesting that, "If he (Cameron) finds himself wobbling in negotiations, he should think of the unforgivable act of vanity that is the new House Of European History", adding, "If that doesn't convince him to stand his ground, then nothing will".
What this drive-by commentator completely fails to appreciate, though, is that while Cameron has a veto over the multi-annual budget, he has no control over the annual budget. And it is from this source that the current expenditure is drawn. Perversely, the ultimate arbiter here is the EU parliament â only it can reject the annual budget.
Nevertheless, Slack concludes that: "The EU is living in a state of near criminal delusion and waste. History will surely record that its bureaucrats fiddled while the euro dream burned".
Delusion, however, is shared by his newspaper, which believes that the waste can be stopped through negotiation. It should recognise the reality and either put up or support UK withdrawal from the EU.
However, we have no cause to expect anything from this newspaper. It too is rather keen on airbrushing its own history, which goes back to the 30s when it was a strong supporter of appeasement.
The paper's then proprietor,
Lord Rothermere, supported Oswald Mosley and the National Union of Fascists . He personally wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January, 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine".
Rothermere also had several meetings with Adolf Hitler (pictured above) and argued that the Nazi leader desired peace. In one article written in March, 1934 he called for Hitler to be given back land in Africa that had been taken as a result of the Versailles Treaty.
The judgement of the paper then was poor then and it has not much improved now.
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